Focus

By Joel Brouwer b. 1968 Joel Brouwer

Photograph found in the road: bejeweled hand

gripping a limp dick. All parties

suffering from lack of ambition. The hills

of Tuscany won’t dapple with sunlight,

and here it is nearly noon. She didn’t

much want the leather jacket, the vendor didn’t

really care to sell it, she hardly tried

it on, he barely praised her beauty, then

everyone wasn’t hungry and went to lunch.

The rubies won’t glow. The delayed train shrugs

on its siding. The penis appears at ease.

Osteria, osteria, osteria, osteria.

I knew many words but preferred to say

the same ones over and over, like

a photographer shooting four frames

of the same subject, hoping for one in focus.

This clearly among the other three.

Joel Brouwer, "Focus" from And So. Copyright © 2009 by Joel Brouwer. Reprinted by permission of Four Way Books.

Source: And So (Four Way Books, 2009)

Biography

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, poet Joel Brouwer is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Syracuse University. Brouwer is the author of several collections of poetry, including And So (2009); Centuries (2003), a National Book Critics Circle Notable Book; and Exactly What Happened (1999), winner of the Larry Levis Reading Prize from Virginia Commonwealth University. He has also published several chapbooks. Brouwer has been . . .

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